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My newfound joy in life, as you might’ve noticed in the past few weeks, has been reading Vos Iz Neias. It’s the official news source (as close as anything in these communities gets to being official, anyway) of what’s going down when life’s as ultra-Orthodox as you can get…or as ultra-Orthodox as you can get and still be on the interweb, anyway.

Sometimes it depresses the hell out of me — since most of my neighbors are already sending the world to hell by only using plastic plates & cutlery and driving down the street, our neighbors north in Williamsburg are crying foul about bike lanes putting scantily-clad cyclists on display. Other times it surprises me pleasantly, like when they commend Nancy Pelosi, whose father saved Jews in Europe during the Holocaust.

And then sometimes I’m blown out of the water, like the story of this rabbi, who spent two and a half years helping a woman with a disabled daughter fight to receive a divorce after her husband fled the country and refused to pay alimony. Yes, there are wack and wicked people in the Haredi world — just like there are in the world in general — but there are also folks who are trying like crazy to make it better.